LatinosUSA

she used to
 
piss him off
with her habit of saying
 
supposably
 
and
for all intensive purposes,
 
but,
in the grand
scheme of things
it didn’t really matter,
 
because
every now and then
 
she’d
stop her talk
and they could just
sit there, doing nothing,
 
while
the dogs of summer
barked and the day grew old.

***

she died of
 
appendicitis
when he was nine,
 
and he
got shuttled
between family
and friends and back
to family again for years.  
 
nobody dies
of appendicitis, anymore,
or sends a kid away the way they did,
 
so it was
no surprise to anyone
 
when he got the gun...
 
got the cash...
 
and
made it
straight for the coast.  
 
that
was the last
anyone ever heard of the kid.  
 
his name
was Jerry or
Tommy or Tom
and he never did come back.

Copyright © 2025 John Yamrus 
All Rights Reserved

In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, John Yamrus has published 39 books. He has also had more than 3,000 poems published in magazines and anthologies around the world. A number of his books and poems are taught in college and university courses. He is widely considered to be a master of minimalism and the neo-noir in modern poetry.  His two most recent books are the memoir THE STREET and a volume of poetry called PEOPLE (AND OTHER BAD IDEAS).